THE USE OF EMAIL AND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EDUCATION LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS

Author

Reda Haddouch

Year of Award

2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Degree Name

Educational Leadership

Department or School/College

College of Education and Human Sciences

Committee Chair

Frances L. O’Reilly

Commitee Members

Shawn Clouse, Zhen Cao, John Matt, William P. McCaw

Keywords

communication, Computer-Mediated Communication, email, Leader-Member Exchange, Leadership, LMX

Publisher

University of Montana

Abstract

Through the use of a survey questionnaire and descriptive statistics to analyze the collected data, this quantitative research study sought to determine whether there is a relationship between the use of email as a form of communication and the quality of the leader-follower relationship in organizations. Two electronic survey questionnaires were designed based on questions derived from three already existing and pretested research instruments. Data were collected from faculty (n=28) and undergraduate students (n=92) at two higher education public institutions in the United States.

The predictor variables included age, gender, level of education, frequency of email use, responsiveness to emails, timeliness of emails, the number of emails initiated, the importance of email protocol, and the perceived benefit of email protocol training. The criterion variable was defined as the score generated from the LMX-7 questionnaire. A Spearman's Rho analysis was used to calculate the correlation coefficient between each of the nine predictor variables and the criterion variable.

The findings demonstrated that there is a moderate relationship between how faculty felt about the perceived benefit of email protocol training, and the score generated from the LMX-7 questionnaire. In addition, this research demonstrated that there is a very weak to a weak relationship between age, gender, level of education, frequency of email use, responsiveness to emails, timeliness of emails, the number of emails initiated, and the importance of email protocol, and the score generated from the LMX-7 questionnaire. Findings from this study provide grounds for building future inquiries into relationships between the use of email and the quality of the leader-member exchange.

Recommended Citation

Haddouch, Reda, "THE USE OF EMAIL AND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EDUCATION LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS" (2017). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11069.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11069